I remember the late 2000s and the early 2010s. This was not a good time for the Linux desktop. I was a Mac OS X user at the time, but I used Linux in virtual

I remember the late 2000s and the early 2010s. This was not a good time for the Linux desktop. I was a Mac OS X user at the time, but I used Linux in virtual machines for development, and so I paid attention to the Linux desktop landscape. Let's step back half a decade to the mid-2000s. Things were looking great for the Linux desktop. GNOME 2 and KDE 3 were well-received, though I do remember some grumblings about GNOME 2 "dumbing down" certain UI elements. Also, Windows was fumbling back then. Windows XP at the time was suffering from security issues, and Windows Vista was poorly received. There was always the allure of Mac OS X for those who wanted a Unix desktop but with a proprietary desktop environment (Aqua) and support for proprietary software packages such as Microsoft Office and the Adobe Creative Suite. Of course, switching to Mac OS X meant purchasing a Mac, which was a high barrier for many people. Given people's frustration with Windows at the time and the cost of buying a Mac, it seemed like the "the year of the Linux" desktop was just a few years away. But then came GNOME 3, which was so controversial that it led to the development of MATE and Cinnamon. KDE 4 was also not well-received, leading to a fork of KDE 3 named Trinity. In the meanwhile, Microsoft released Windows 7, which was well-received and is considered one of the best versions of Windows of all time, alongside Windows 2000. Also, Apple released Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which many Mac users consider the pinnacle of Mac OS X. I think the controversies surrounding GNOME 3 and KDE 4, combined with Microsoft's getting its act together for Windows 7 and the allure of Jobs-era Mac OS X releases, helped push back "the year of the Linux desktop." Personally I wish Etoile (http://etoileos.com/ http://etoileos.com/), an experimental desktop built using the GNUstep (https://www.gnustep.org/ https://www.gnustep.org/) framework in the late 2000s and early 2010s, had taken off....it would have been really cool to have some type of alternate universe FOSS Mac OS X-like system.